Olives (6 page)

‘
These are
the ones I’m showing at the Lines Gallery next month,’ she said,
holding up a large pen and ink sketch. ‘They’re a celebration of
life in the Eastern City.’

A man and boy
walked hand in hand through a shabby street, the washing hanging
out of the windows and cables strewn between the rooftops. It had
an air of tragedy; there was a fierce pride in the man’s bearing
that contrasted with his battered, desperate air.

‘
It’s
stunning. You’re an inky-fingered genius.’

She laughed.
‘Right. Come on, let’s get back to the family.’ She turned by the
door, a serious look on her face. ‘I’m really glad you like them,
Paul.’

I followed
her out of the studio. To tell the truth, I was really glad,
too.

I guessed the
man who walked into the living room just after Aisha and I rejoined
the family was her brother Daoud. Nour stood as he came in and so
did I. He was in his late thirties and handsome, but there was a
quiet intensity about Daoud Dajani that dampened the mood in the
room briefly. He wore a tight polo neck and I could see his build.
He moved like a boxer.

His eyes
bored into mine as he took my hand. ‘Welcome. You are Paul
Stokes.’

A statement
of two facts, unsmilingly delivered. I could feel myself tripping
over my words before I spoke them. ‘Yes. Thank you. You must be
Daoud.’

He held my
hand, a grip of steel. His temples carved deep incursions into his
slicked-back hair, his dark eyebrows and strong chin carried an air
of belligerence. He wore a slim gold chain on his neck and another,
thicker one on his wrist which rattled when we shook hands. He
continued to hold his grip after mine had relaxed, looking into my
eyes with a force that brought heat to my face. There were only two
of us in the world, a moment of paralysis, then he smiled and took
my arm in his other hand, squeezing it in a fleeting gesture that
could be friendly. Or not. I knew uncertainty showed on my face and
forced a smile I suspected looked more like a salesman’s grin. Nour
was standing with us, her light touch on us both and her voice
gentle.

‘
Come on.
Dinner’s ready.’

I found
myself back in a space filled with laughing people. Ibrahim had
finished another story and Nancy’s voice was
mock-shocked.

‘
How can he
say these things? He is a fantasist. Thirty-five years married and
not a word of truth in all of them.’

Dinner was a
procession of dishes brought in by the maid from the kitchen, each
introduced to me and piled on my plate by Nour: stuffed courgettes,
vine leaves, houmos flecked with grilled lamb and toasted pine
nuts, roasted chicken on saffron rice, salads scattered with
pomegranate seeds, shards of fried Arabic bread and tiny purple
grains of bitter
sumak
. Nour insisted
I try it all, pressing second helpings of everything on me. We
talked about England and Iraq, about Jordan and the punishing Royal
travel schedule and, of course, about the peace.

It was like a
mantra, everywhere I went. Eventually all conversations turned to
it — the peace, the peace, the peace. The new deal the Americans
had finally brokered between a reluctant, right-wing Israeli
government and the tired, broken down remnants of the Palestinian
administration had at least brought the hope this would, against
all the odds, be the
one
peace. The deal
to lead to the long-awaited ‘two-state solution,’ the first hope
since the disastrous collapse of the jury-rigged Heath Robinson
compromise of Oslo.

The
conversation turned to Palestine in the past, to
Al Naqba
, ‘the catastrophe’, the formation of Israel in 1948
and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. When I asked
Ibrahim whether he had ever gone back there, his bushy eyebrows
shot up in astonishment.

‘
Go back? Of course we go back! As often as possible. It is
not always easy.’ He laid his forearm on the table as if he were
about to give blood, palm up. He looked across at me. ‘Sometimes
they are like this on the border. Sometimes like this.’ He balled
his hairy hand into a fist. ‘When it is like
this
you
are turned back or made to wait for hours while they play with you.
Sometimes before they make me kneel on the path in front of them.
That is hard for a man like me. I am old, I have become used to
having the dignity, you know?’

The hubbub
around the table died down as Ibrahim’s voice rumbled on. ‘Mama
Mariam is too old now. She keeps our farm alive with Hamad, my
brother, because she is too damn stubborn to leave it. We are all
grateful for her. We know what will happens if you leave your land
there. They will take it. There are many families in Jordan and
Lebanon who still have the old iron keys to their farms, but they
cannot return. We still have it, the place where we all came from.
She keeps it alive for us. We all do what we can to help. Some
money, some supplies when they will let us take them across. The
power there is bad, the water is hard to get sometimes – especially
for the trees. We often have to use
wasta
to get things
through the border. You know
wasta
?’

I nodded,
‘Yes, yes I do. It was the second Arabic word I learned in
Jordan.’

Ibrahim
grunted. ‘Our tragedy that this should be the case. The first word,
Paul?’

‘
Insh’Allah
.’

Ibrahim’s
laughter boomed around the table, infectious and all-consuming
before he finally descended into a fit of coughing, wiping the
tears from his eyes.

‘
My God,
Paul, but you know us in two words!’

Nour smiled
at me, her arm around her younger daughter. ‘Mama Mariam is
certainly some lady. We named Mariam here after her.’

I caught
Aisha’s sad, small smile. The maid brought coffee.

‘
Paul, Paul,’
Ibrahim grinned. ‘Here you are just arrived in Jordan and we are
boring you with our problems.’

‘
No, no.
Please. It’s not boring. I understand so little about it all. I’ve
only seen the violence in the Middle East on TV. It’s always there
on the news. You know, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan. I’d
never thought about it all in terms of people living in farms
trying to get by. We miss the humanity of it when we just take in
the headlines.’

‘
Ah, but this is all we all are. Farmers. Before we had over
two hundred
dunums
of olive groves on the farm. Now
there are less than twenty. The others are on the wrong side of the
wall. Hamad crosses over when he can, but they always close the
gates when it is time to harvest so the olives become spoiled or
the settlers take them. Now they are even limiting the water we are
allowed to keep the trees alive. Our family used to live on the
money from the olive oil, like so many others in Palestine. Now
they make it too hard for us. We live on trading instead. We will
be the people who pay for this peace with our land, and yet what
else can we do?’

And so you
bomb them
whipped through my
mind, a momentary and unworthy thought shaming me as the light over
the table caught the moisture in the old man’s eyes. A feeling of
being watched made me steal a glance at Daoud who was, indeed,
gracing me with a steady, neutral gaze.

Aisha broke
the silence. ‘One day
Insh’Allah
we’ll have
our farm safe, Uncle.’ Everyone around the table murmured,
‘
Insh’Allah.’

Daoud stood.
‘Have you ever seen an olive tree, Paul? Come with me, I’ll show
you the grove of olives we keep here in Abdoun.’

Nour pushed
back her chair, taking Mariam’s plate and beckoning for Aisha’s.
‘Yes, go on. We’ll clear up the table. Aisha, give me a hand in the
kitchen.’

I followed
Daoud, hoping my reluctance didn’t show. We stood together on the
veranda looking out over the dark garden – a couple of acres of
prime Abdoun real estate. He flicked a switch by the kitchen door
and I saw part of the garden was laid to lawn, but the hilly rise
to one side accommodated a small stand of olive trees.

‘
Ibrahim and
my father brought these trees from our farm in Qaffin and planted
them here over thirty years ago. Back then it looked like we were
going to lose everything from over there, so they thought they’d
keep at least this much.’ He led the way down the steps to the
trees. ‘Smoke?’

‘
No thanks, I
don’t.’

He grunted,
then lit up a Marlboro Light. ‘These trees are everything to the
farmers. They are tended like fine grape vines, the olives are
pressed like wine. The first cut is virgin, the finest. The olives
weep the purest oil when they are first squeezed. We press them
until they can weep no more, then we feed the remains back to the
land, to the animals. We still press oil over at the farm on the
old stone press. It is not much, it is not enough to keep the place
running, but we help out, as Ibrahim said. It is the finest oil you
will ever taste. It is a symbol for us too, you understand. Of
hope.’

I held a
bunch of the smooth, silvery-green leaves in my hand. I didn’t know
what to say to him. He stood in among the trees, the faint pall of
smoke from his cigarette making my nostrils widen.

‘
Ibrahim said
the security wall cuts the farm in two. Will the peace uphold
that?’

‘
Yes. The
wall is the new border, not what we hoped, the 1967 border. We
demonstrated against the wall, like the other farmers. But there
was nothing anyone could do. Some of the hot-headed ones got
themselves beaten and arrested. The world looked the other way.
Always it looks the other way. And so they built settlements, they
took land, they burned crops, they inched their way into the water.
Now the peace gives us the absolute minimum and gives Israel the
absolute maximum. Of our land.’

I didn’t know
what to say, surrounded by these trees and the family’s loss. ‘I
suppose at least you still have the farm.’

Daoud shook
his head. ‘Now, after all these years, they are starting to cut the
water to the farmers, both over there and here in Jordan. The olive
groves are starting to die. These trees are the heritage we must
take with us into the future. My company is investing in the water
because we believe it will be critical for the future. Not just for
the trees but for our people to live. We are bidding for the
privatisation of Jordan’s water resources. You have heard of
this?’

‘
Yes, the
Minister told me about it. Is it really such a problem, the water
shortage?’

‘
We are
already suffering from the lack of water. We will suffer more, our
crops will fail and our farmers starve. It is critical to our
future to find a better way to share the water. The Israelis steal
the water from us every day. I want to steal it back.’

I let go the
bunch of leaves and glanced across to Daoud, who was looking down
at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘
How?’

I felt his
eyes burning in the darkness. I shifted uncomfortably and so did
the conversation.

‘
You like
Aisha?’

I tried not
to react to the abrupt question, taking my time and listening to
the faint traffic noise carried on the cold night air. I replied
cautiously. ‘She’s been great to me, Daoud. The Ministry’s lucky to
have her. I couldn’t have settled in the way I have without her.
She’s a smart girl.’

A crowd
cheered in my mind. Just right. My breath was coming out in misty
puffs.

‘
She was my
father’s favourite.’

The cheering
died down. ‘She’s a very good artist. You must be proud of
her.’

‘
Yes. Yes I
am. I would not like anything to happen to her. She took his death
badly, as I suppose we all did. She is still perhaps,’ he searched
for the word, ‘vulnerable.’

Fucking hell.
Enough already.
I kept the
smile going, but it was getting hard to maintain. My cheeks hurt
from the effort. ‘Jordan is a beautiful country, Daoud. I’m glad I
came here. I’m sure my girlfriend will like it here, too. She’s a
lawyer. She practises international contract law,
actually.’

Not strictly
true, the line about Anne liking it in Jordan. I hardly expected
her to turn up. Workaholic Anne never took leave and we didn’t
anticipate seeing each other until I went home for
Christmas.

Daoud seemed
lost in thought, leaning against the trunk of an olive tree and
drawing on his cigarette. Finally he spoke.

‘
The Israelis
have taken everything from us, Paul. Our land, our dignity. They
took my father, too. My brother. Now they’re taking the water.
We’ve lost too much.’

He pushed the
cigarette butt into the sandy soil with his heel, then put his hand
on my shoulder, a quick squeeze and a pat, a very Arab gesture of
finality and yet somehow accepting. ‘I won’t let the olives die.
Come on, let’s get back inside. I’ll get you a bottle of our oil.
At least when the olives weep, we are enriched.’